Date Preferences Not Post-Racial Yet

Recent studies of on-line dating sites show that racial bias is still strong. Two studies, one by researchers at UC Irvine of the Yahoo! Personals daring service and another by the OKCupid site illustrated strong preferences for particular races.

In the UCI study, of women who expressed a racial preference (73%) on Yahoo. less than 10% would bother to respond to overtures from men of Asian descent, particularly East Indians, somewhat behind Black and Latino Men. White women in particular were particularly exclusive (racist?). 64% of those with a racial preference checked whites only (93% excluded Asian men). In other words, nearly one out of two white women wanted to date only whites.

About 3 out of 5 men expressed a racial preference. Nearly half selected Asian women, compared with 7% selecting Black women. 

Men of all races will avoid black women, and all races had a degree of racial bias in terms of dating.

More information about the UCI study is available here.

OKCupid look at one million messages from their site. From their data, White guys are the most popular - big surprise - but they're the least likely to respond to messages from women. The reply rate of women to all races to non-white men was below the average. Overall, in decreasing order of likelihood to receive a reply were White, Native American, other, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, Latino, Asian, Black and Indian men. 

For the female end, the decreasing order of likelihood to receive a reply were Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, other, Asian, Indian, Latino, Native American, White and Black women. 

I guess white guys do have white men's disease - it's all about them. So much for this aspect of reverse discrimination. As the OKCuplid blog puts it, based on their replay rate,"White men are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it." 

More info is available at the OKCupid blog 

Their summary - "racism is alive and well."